Bigfoot, Tobin & Me

by Melissa Savage

  I stand next to the bed staring at him. Looking at him in a hospital bed reminds me of the last time I saw Mama.

  Sick and weak and pale.

  Machines and cords and tubes intertwined.

  The beeping of the heart and breathing machines.

  ‘Lemonade,’ she whispered that last day. ‘You are the love of my life, sweet girl. I wish I could stay here with you, but I can’t. Always remember that we are connected, no matter what. I am a part of you as you are a part of me. I will always be in your heart. I will be a part of your spirit. You are my Lemonade. You are strong and smart and will always find a way to make sweet whatever bad comes your way.’

  I crawled up in bed with her and laid my head on her shoulder, watching her chest slowly rise up and then sink down.

  Up and then down.

  Up and then down.

  Until it didn’t move up and then down any more.

  A doctor put his hand on my back and told me it was time to say goodbye.

  ‘Mama,’ I whisper to her now. ‘Look what I did, Mama. Look what I did. And now I don’t know what to do. I can’t make it sweet. I don’t know how. Help me, Mama. I need you.’

  I wipe tears with my palms.

  ‘Please, Mama, tell me what to do. I’ve made a mess of things, and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t. I can’t make lemonade any more . . . I forgot how.’

  The room is quiet except for the beeping of the machines around me. Just like that last day with her. My guts feel all twisted up inside my stomach.

  I crawl up on the bed next to Charlie and lie my head on his shoulder, watching his chest move up and then down.

  Up and then down.

  Up and then down.

  Machines beep and air rushes through tubes resting inside his nose.

  More tears find their way down my cheeks and on to his chest. So many that I’m drowning.

  I can’t breathe.

  I can’t stop.

  I’m slipping into sadness quicksand, and not even Charlie will find me. I’ll slip away, and no one will ever be able to save me.

  ‘Please, Mama,’ I whisper again into his chest. ‘I need you, Mama, and you’re not here. Please, Mama, please tell God not to take my grandfather, too.’

  36. Time to Squeeze the Lemons

  I wake up the next morning underneath my fluffy duvet.

  Rainbow in my arms.

  Dishes clink in the kitchen like any other morning, and I can smell coffee brewing.

  Charlie.

  Getting the sticks and seeds and bark ready.

  Having his usual coffee.

  Black. No sugar.

  Maybe it was all just a bad dream. A horrible nightmare.

  When I push the covers off me, I see I’m still wearing Mrs Dickerson’s Willow Creek sweatshirt and shorts from the bottom drawer of the dresser in her spare room.

  And I know it’s no dream.

  I drag myself out of bed, my arms, legs and whole body tired from the heavy load.

  The floorboards squeak underneath me as I tiptoe down the hall and peek around the corner to the kitchen.

  ‘About time,’ Tobin says to me, stuffing a piece of bacon in his mouth and snapping in another blue puzzle piece. ‘Look, Lemonade. We only have one ball of wool left.’

  Debbie turns around from the stove.

  ‘Good morning, Lemonade.’ She smiles. ‘I’m making breakfast sandwiches with eggs and bacon. Grab a plate, honey.’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ I tell her, pulling a chair out next to Tobin.

  He’s staring at me like I’m some kind of alien who just crash-landed out in the garden and then came in for breakfast.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ I ask him.

  ‘What do you think I’m looking at?’ he says.

  ‘I mean, why are you staring at me like that?’

  ‘Then why didn’t you say that in the first place?’

  ‘Tobin!’ I say, exasperated.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I guess because I want to know how you are and I don’t know how to ask you, so I’m just watching you to see if I can tell on my own. But I can’t tell on my own, so I guess I’ll just have to ask you anyhow.’

  ‘That depends on how Charlie is,’ I say, turning to Debbie.

  She comes over to the table holding an open-faced breakfast sandwich with sunny-side-up eggs that are runny in the middle and two burnt-on-the-edges strips of bacon on top. She’s wearing her faded Levi’s with holes in the knees, a yellow T-shirt and a matching bandana in her hair. She has blusher on her cheeks and small silver hoops in her ears.

  ‘I got a call from the hospital this morning, honey.’ She places a warm hand on my head. ‘Charlie is awake and doing well. He’s going to be just fine, Lem.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  I lie my head on my arms on the table and cry. I probably have yolk stuck in my hair and bacon grease too, but I don’t even care.

  I just cry and cry and cry.

  Debbie is sitting next to me, her head on my shoulder. ‘Sweet girl,’ she says softly. ‘I know how hard things have been for you. It’ll get better, I promise you it will.’

  ‘I–I don’t know how,’ I sputter through the tears.

  ‘What do you mean, honey?’

  ‘How to make it better,’ I tell her, lifting my head up to face her.

  I feel Tobin’s hand on my other shoulder then, and I turn to face him, wiping my nose with my forearm.

  ‘By making lemonade, that’s how.’ He pats my shoulder like you pat a German shepherd. ‘You said you know how to make it, isn’t that right?’

  ‘I used to know,’ I tell him. ‘But I think I forgot.’

  ‘Well, it’s probably still in there somewhere,’ he says matter-of-factly, and then goes back to his ball of wool.

  I turn to Debbie.

  ‘He makes a lot of sense sometimes.’ She smiles at me.

  I look at him.

  He’s examining a blue puzzle piece over his wire-rims. Then he finds just the right spot for it and snaps it into place. He looks up at us and smiles.

  ‘What?’ he asks.

  I turn to Debbie.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah, he does.’

  37. Deep-down Love

  After breakfast, Debbie helps me get ready so we can all go back to the hospital to visit Charlie. I watch her in the bathroom mirror while she gently brushes the knots out of my curls. She’s helping me tie a bandana in my hair just like hers. She found me a pink one back at her place and then we picked out a pink top from my chest of drawers to go with it.

  I study her while she concentrates on detangling the red jungle. She looks a lot like Tobin. Mostly in the eyes and the lips.

  ‘You miss him, don’t you?’ I finally ask her.

  ‘Who? Charlie?’

  ‘No . . . Scotty.’

  She stops brushing then and her eyes meet mine in the mirror.

  They’re exactly the same colour as Tobin’s. Bright blue with tiny specks of brown inside.

  ‘Yes,’ she says softly, starting to brush the knots again. ‘Very much. I’m sure just as much as you miss your mom.’

  I sigh and lean on the counter in front of me, my chin in my hand.

  ‘I miss her so much sometimes my insides hurt. Like worse than having the flu.’

  ‘I know that ache,’ she says. ‘I know it very well.’

  ‘What do you do when you hurt so badly inside that you don’t know what to do with yourself?’

  She takes a long time to think about her answer. I can tell she’s thinking because she looks just like Tobin when she’s doing it. Serious and intense.

  ‘I guess I try to think about some of the best times I can remember with him. And sometimes it turns that ache into happiness. Happiness that I had Scotty in my life at all. Even if I don’t get to keep him for ever here on earth, I get to keep him for ever in here.’ She points to her heart.

  ‘I know exact
ly what you mean. I have so many good memories of the times I spent with Mama, I can’t even count them all.’

  She meets my eyes again and grins really widely at me in the mirror. Then she stops brushing and pulls herself up on the counter next to me. ‘Tell me one. A wonderful memory of your mom. I’d love to hear it.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘Of course I would.’

  Now it’s my turn to think really hard.

  ‘There are so many,’ I tell her. ‘It’s hard to choose.’

  She nods like she understands. And I know she really does.

  ‘Every Saturday morning I’d get up early and crawl into bed with her and we’d cuddle together. And then we’d get up and walk to Piper’s Bakery near the pier and get hot tea and the biggest, stickiest, gooiest bear claws you’ve ever seen. Then we’d go down by the water to find a bench and we’d eat the bear claws and we’d catch up on what happened during the week. I’d tell her all about my friends at school and she’d tell me all about the animals that came to see her and their owners, too.’

  ‘That sounds wonderful,’ Debbie says.

  ‘Saturdays were my most favourite day of the week because of that.’

  She smiles. ‘I can see why.’

  ‘Now you tell me one,’ I say, putting my hand on her knee.

  ‘OK,’ she says, covering my hand with hers. ‘When I was pregnant with Tobin, I had to spend some time in bed and I was so bored and tired of being in bed all the time. And Scotty came home from work every day with a single tulip to put in the vase next to my bed. Just because I couldn’t get outside to enjoy them. And then he would go down to the kitchen and make us open-faced breakfast sandwiches for dinner with sunny-side-up eggs and crispy bacon on top. Because that’s what I was craving back then. Then we’d sit in bed together and watch TV while we shared a bowl of Neapolitan ice cream. I ate all the strawberry and he always complained I didn’t share it with him.’ She laughs to herself. ‘I stuck him with the vanilla and chocolate every time.’

  I laugh too. ‘Is that why you only buy strawberry ice cream?’ I ask her.

  Her eyes get wide. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘How did you—’

  ‘Tobin said you only buy strawberry even though vanilla goes best with chocolate cake.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he tells me that again and again.’ She smiles to herself. ‘I guess I buy it for Scotty . . . for when . . . if . . . he comes home.’

  ‘You love him a lot, don’t you?’

  ‘Deeply. Just like you love your mother.’

  ‘Deep-down love,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Deep-down love.’

  ‘Charlie said Scotty wrote you a letter.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘I keep it with me all the time. I guess it makes me feel closer to him. To read his words. How much he loved us.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ I tell her. ‘I keep Rainbow right on top of my bed now. Even though she doesn’t smell like Mama any more. I know that once she held that rabbit close to her and when I hold it close to me it’s almost like . . . like she’s holding me again. The way she used to.’

  She smiles. ‘I remember Rainbow.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  I smile too now and know that Debbie’s right. Thinking of memories with Mama does make the ache inside me feel better. Because it’s like for that moment she’s here with me again.

  Debbie looks at me. ‘Thank you for sharing your memory with me. And thank you for letting me share mine.’

  Then she jumps down from the counter and wraps her arms around me.

  ‘You’re very special, Lemonade Liberty Witt. I’m so glad I get to know you.’

  Her arms feel nice around me. Kind of like it felt when Mama’s were around me, but different, too.

  Nice different.

  At ten fifteen hours (really 10.15 a.m.), we all pile into Debbie’s copper-coloured Pinto and head back to the hospital to visit Charlie. Tobin lets me ride shotgun without my even having to call it first.

  On the way there my palms are wet and my stomach is still queasy.

  I bite my fingernails the whole way across Highway 299, then all down Davis Street, and even down Blue Lake Boulevard, where the hospital is. By the time we get there, my thumb is bleeding a little, and it aches because I bit it too far down.

  Charlie’s room is number eleven. When we get to his door, I push it open.

  ‘Well, there they all are!’ Charlie says with a big smile on his face.

  He’s sitting up in bed with a book. I scramble up on the bed next to him and wrap my arms around his neck. He looks more surprised than I’ve ever seen him, but he wraps his arms around me and gives me a big, warm hug back.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Charlie!’ I burst out, my cheek on his shoulder. ‘I’m just so sorry!’

  ‘Oh, Lem, it’s not your fault,’ he tells me, squeezing me tight. ‘I’m the one who slipped on the rocks. That was all me.’

  ‘But if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have been out there to begin with.’ I pull away to face him. ‘Out in the rain, looking for me.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s true,’ he tells me. ‘But wherever you go, I’m going to follow you . . . you know why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because . . .’ He clears his throat. ‘Because I love you, that’s why.’

  Did he just say love?

  Love?

  Me?

  Lemonade Liberty Witt?

  After everything that’s happened?

  After I spewed lava in every direction?

  Even though I forgot how to make lemonade?

  I look up at him, and he gives me another big squeeze. And it feels like I’m being pulled from the quicksand. His face tells me that he’s been there the whole time, making sure I didn’t sink too deep, waiting for me to figure a way out on my own. But when I slipped farther . . . he gave me his hand.

  That big, strong hand with a special silver band.

  Just like the night we made warm milk on the stove.

  ‘OK, OK, enough of this.’ He clears his throat a couple of times. ‘I have a very important question for you all. There’s nothing but salt-free chicken, runny mashed potatoes and watery jelly in this place. Did someone bring me a bag of Tibetan yak jerky?’

  Everyone laughs.

  Even me.

  38. In Triplicate

  ‘I am officially reinstating you as a Bigfoot Detectives Inc. employee,’ Tobin tells me that evening after the hospital.

  He pulls my Assistant Bigfoot Detective tag with the wad of glue out of the drawer of the desk at the Bigfoot Headquarters and pins it to my front. He stands back, cocks his head to the side and puckers up his lips, checking to see if it’s straight.

  LEMONADE LIBERTY WITT

  Assistant Bigfoot Detective

  I touch the edges of the badge like it’s gold. I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I’ve actually missed the stupid thing pinned to my front. It makes me feel important and part of something big.

  ‘Raise your right hand,’ he says, holding his hand high in the air.

  ‘Oh, come on! Is that really necessary?’

  ‘Of course it’s necessary.’

  I give him my biggest eye roll ever.

  ‘I, Lemonade Liberty Witt, promise not to blab any top secret, Bigfoot-related matters . . .’

  I repeat it.

  ‘To any source, including all newspapers and TV reporters, corporate spies and any and all naysayers, while employed at Bigfoot Detectives Inc., for eternity or longer.’

  I repeat that, too.

  ‘And I will follow the lead of the Bigfoot Detectives Inc. founder and president and stop asking so many questions . . .’

  ‘Come on!’ I drop my hand.

  He smiles. ‘OK, that’s good enough, I guess. I’ll type up the reinstatement paperwork tonight. I’ll need it signed and sent back in triplicate.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘In triplicate,�
�� he says. ‘You know, one copy for you, one for me and one for the file.’

  ‘Why do you have to make everything so hard?’

  ‘What’s hard about triplicate?’

  ‘Well, first off, it’s a waste of time.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s the rules.’

  ‘Your rules.’

  ‘So? Without rules things would run amuck and then life would just be anarchy . . . a ruleless, leaderless society. Then the next thing you know, you’ll want to move the message pad . . . anarchy. You want that?’

  ‘A little anarchy never hurt anyone,’ I tell him.

  ‘Actually, anarchy has been the downfall of many societies. During the Neolithic Period—’

  ‘OK, OK.’ I hold out my hands, sensing one of his twenty-minute lists coming my way. ‘You win. I’ll sign it in triplicate.’

  He smiles again.

  He likes it when he wins.

  Or maybe he’s just happy because everything is back to the way it was. The way it should be.

  I smile then too.

  A week after Charlie gets out of the hospital, everything is back to normal.

  Mostly.

  Charlie’s almost all better, except for the stitches sewn into his right eyebrow and the bandage taped over it to keep the germs out. Professor Malcolm is on his way from Idaho to give us the results from the test of the hair sample we sent him. He called Charlie last night to tell us that the local news wants to interview Tobin and me about our findings.

  That morning, I choose my yellow sundress with the tiny daisies, the one that Mama bought me for a trip to the San Francisco Playhouse for her birthday last year. I carefully comb my hair and let my red curls hang loose down my back.

  ‘Well, look at you,’ Charlie says when I come to the kitchen table. ‘Don’t you look like a shiny new penny?’

  ‘Thanks, Charlie, it’s—’ I stop and stare at Tobin.

  He is sitting at the kitchen table in a crisp striped short-sleeved shirt with a clip-on polka-dot bow tie and long khaki trousers with shiny brown dress shoes. His reddish-brown curls are parted on the side and slicked down into one big wave over his eyebrows.

  Minus one brown safari hat strapped tightly under his chin.

  ‘What happened to you?’ I ask, giggling behind my hand.